Monday, February 8, 2010

Play-Date Fare - S'mores Brownies... take 1...

So little miss and I are invited to a friend's house tomorrow after preschool for lunch and a play date. I figured we could bring dessert.

The only problem was that today was a pretty busy day here in the C household, so I didn't really have much time to be overly clever or creative.

So I thought I would try to spice up simple with a little bit of fun.

The simple? Brownies. The fun? I happened to have half a package of mini-marshmallows laying around (seeing as we usually have our home-made ones, the store-bought ones tend to be forgotten...). I love s'mores, so figured I could figure something out...

Ordinarily, I would have hopped online, googled and foodgawked and checked out allrecipes to see who has had this idea before and what they have tried. Not that I would have done what they did, necessarily, but it would have provided a springboard. But I didn't today. I really just winged it.

I was a little worried about mixing the marshmallows right into the batter, or putting them on top for the whole cooking time, since I thought that they would burn being in the oven for that long. So I popped the brownies into the oven themselves, and set my helper to work counting marshmallows. Honestly, this was more as an activity than a necessity, but she took her job very seriously. And only snuck marshmallows when my back was turned... I couldn't tell you how many marshmallows there really were, because we were chatting the whole time, so she would constantly forget where she left off and start over.

About 7 minutes before the brownies needed to come out of the oven, we sprinkled the marshmallows on top and put the whole thing back in to finish up. The brownies were more done than I'd hoped at that point... I was hoping that the marshmallows might sink in a little bit... but hey. Timer beeps, and:

Hmm... not bad, but not quite what I'd hoped. So... one minute under the broiler:

Closer... so I tried to (gently) spread them out, so it would at least be like a marshmallow frosting on the brownies... and this was the result:

Not what I'd had in mind, which is why this post is titled "take 1" - because there will definitely be a "take 2" on these. I have no doubt that these will be yummy. I mean, brownies and toasted marshmallows - how bad could it be? But next time, hopefully they'll me more s'mores-y. We shall see!